


A Twist of Fate

by Rhianne



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Gen Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhianne/pseuds/Rhianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Jim had never gone to meet Blair at the university during Switchman? How would their lives have changed?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Twist of Fate

_‘Chance is a cruel taskmaster, and a man’s fate can rest on the single flip of a coin.’_

 

~*~*~

 

“He’s the only one who can truly help you.”

It’s strange, because even as he takes the card and looks up at the man standing in front of him, Jim knows he’s not a real doctor.

Sure, he looks the part – scholarly glasses, unruly hair tied back safely out of sight, white lab coat, the whole nine yards, but Jim would lay odds that the closest this kid has even been to medical school is making out with a nurse.

He just doesn’t smell like a doctor. There are no chemicals, no cloying scent of anaesthetic that is lingering around this whole damn building, and that Jim somehow knows he’d be able to detect even if they weren’t in the hospital itself.

Instead, this guy smells of… of dust, and ink, and there’s a hint of something that he can’t quite place. He frowns, concentrating on that smell again, trying to name it, but the headache hits him again, burrowing through his skull like a jackhammer and it’s all he can do not to groan out loud.

God, even the migraines he used to have as a kid didn’t hurt like this.

The world fades for a second, and Jim has the strangest feeling, like he’s falling, immersed in a whirl of sound and colour and taste, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, he realises that this guy’s saying something and everything snaps back into harsh, bright focus.

“You’re a cop. See the man.”

Then he’s gone, and Jim is even more confused than ever when another man in a white coat walks through the door with the same name.

 

~*~*~

 

Stepping out into the daylight, he grits his teeth as the noise tries to deafen him. Car engines revving, people talking and laughing and crying, but he can only see one car that’s actually moving, and only a handful of people and God, how can so few people make so much noise?

He shoves his hands in his pockets as he heads for his car, trying desperately to overcome the urge to lash out, to hit something but the material scratches against his fingers.

He probably shouldn’t even be driving in this state, he knows there’s something seriously wrong with him no matter what the doctor says, but then he feels the business card and stops dead in the street, pulling it out of his pocket.

He reads the card twice over even though the black letters hurt his eyes, but he can’t see it. Can’t see the sign saying that *this* is the answer, that some guy at the university holds the key when a hospital full of doctors and state of the art equipment can’t find it.

Then it hits him. The university, the dust, the faintest traces of ink on the kid’s hands. He’s a student. Just a student, and a sudden burst of white hot range makes him crumple the flimsy card between his fingers, something primal in his rejoicing at he tiny act of violence.

How can a student help him?

How can he possibly know what it’s like to be losing his mind a piece at a time, hallucinating sounds and smells that no-one else can hear?

Fingers tightening briefly around the card, he tosses it into the gutter without another thought, and walks away.

 

~*~*~

 

As he sinks down into the sofa the broken springs creak and groan in protest, and Blair shifts slightly to the left, searching for the one small section that’s still at least slightly comfortable to sit on.

He knows that he should probably try to replace it, there has to be somewhere in Cascade that he can pick up something better without spending a fortune, but then, as always, he thinks of the textbooks he can buy with even a hundred dollars, and instantly dismisses his need for a sofa, glancing round the warehouse with a grin.

This place isn’t much, but for $850 a month it’s his, and with Larry around he knows that he needs all the space he can get. Even if he has to share it with more rats than he really wants to think about.

On nights like this a bit more heat would be nice, but he’s stayed in worse places, and at least it’s mostly dry, as long as he keeps away from the windows.

He laughs to himself at the chattering sound as Larry descends noisily onto the sofa next to him, bouncing up and down until Blair reaches for the TV remote with hands wrapped in fingerless gloves.

“All right, man,” he mutters, flicking through the channels until he finds something suitably violent, with guns blazing and men on horseback shouting over their own din.

He feels his own good mood dim slightly as Larry begins to screech in delight in time with the gunfire.

It’s late, he’s tired, and though he knows the research needs doing – his paper’s due uncomfortably soon – suddenly he’s not really in the mood for this.

This isn’t the first time he’s wished that he’d done his research with Larry on something a little quieter – like Barney.

Then again…maybe not.

At least once the paper is done Larry can go back to the university, and he’ll get some peace and quiet. Blair’s all for having company, but it’s kind of hard to meditate with a monkey chattering in your ear all the time, and given the choice he prefers his company a little more, well, human. Female if possible.

Blair doesn’t have to even glance at the TV to tell him that the gun battle is still raging, and as he pulls himself up from the sofa in search of a beer he mentally cheers for the Indians, even though he knows that this is Hollywood, so the ending is a foregone conclusion.

Blair knows he should be watching Larry, cataloguing his reactions to each individual act of violence so they can be cross-referenced, but it’s nothing he hasn’t done before, and tonight the lure of a beer is just too strong. 

There’s time enough for study later.

The bottle feels cold in his hand as he shuts the fridge, drops of moisture soaking into his gloves as he heads back towards the sofa.

The gun battle seems to be winding down, but suddenly Blair notices that Larry is getting even more excited, screeching almost constantly and turning away from the TV screen for the first time since Blair turned it on.

Well aware that this isn’t Larry’s normal behaviour, Blair puts the bottle down and reaches for his notebook, mentally running through the primate research he’s done, trying to work out what has got Larry so excited.

As Blair moves closer to the TV, Larry suddenly leaps off the sofa, moving so fast that Blair can barely keep track of him in the dim light from the table lamp.

Another screech, quieter this time, and Blair sees Larry on the floor behind the sofa, scampering backwards towards the wall. Light from the television flickers around them as Blair suddenly realises that Larry is frightened, not excited, and he drops the notebook, approaching the ape carefully, trying not to spook him again. He’s never seemed scared of a TV show before.

Then a noise deafens him. 

It sounds like a bomb going off, with the shatter of breaking glass and falling bricks, and for an instant Blair is confused, sure that the TV is playing a western and not a Schwarzenegger film.

Then something hits him in the side, throwing him backwards before a crushing weight pushes him to the floor.

The world goes crazy – the cowboys are still shooting each other, another explosion and Larry’s still screaming. 

For a second everything hurts, and then nothing hurts at all but he can taste blood in his mouth and the smell of it makes him feel sick as the world begins to spin behind closed eyes.

Then there’s nothing at all.

 

~*~*~

 

Everything is blissfully quiet, and Jim rests his head wearily against white walls, relishing these few precious moments of clarity and silence.

He’s cold, and he pulls his knees into his chest, wishing desperately for socks to help warm his bare feet, even though he’s all too well aware that not ten minutes ago he was so hot, he was dripping with sweat that he can still feel drying against now shivering skin.

It’s at times like this Jim can almost imagine that he’s okay, that it’s only a cold or flue causing the fevers, and that nothing else is wrong with him.

But these times never last, and in a way Jim is pathetically grateful, because it’s now, when the symptoms are gone and he’s once more capable of rational thought, that Jim is painfully aware that he’s losing his mind.

If there is any of it left for him to lose.

Jim has no idea how long he’s been here, though it wouldn’t really matter if he did, if he could count his time here accurately down to the very second since he first walked through the door.

And isn’t that the biggest joke of them all? Because he made this choice, walked in voluntarily, signed all the forms and disclaimers – can’t even say that he hadn’t understood them. 

He’d been an intelligent man once.

But God, he hadn’t realised he’d end up stuck here, even though they’d warned him this might happen. All he wants them to do is make it stop, fix whatever is wrong with him, but all the tests prove that nothing is wrong with him. Physically he’s in almost perfect health.

They tell him that it’s psychosomatic when he’s coherent enough to understand. He hears them whispering outside his room, words like ‘trauma’, and ‘stress’, and ‘did you know he’s the one from Time magazine? You know, that soldier from Peru?’

Sometimes he can hear them in spite of the closed doors, even though he knows it’s not possible, and yet sometimes he can’t even hear his own breathing.

Jim hasn’t yet decided which is worse.

But deep down, he knows he can’t leave, not until this stops, whatever it is. He has these blackouts, times when he loses track of everything and everyone, and god knows what would happen if he had one with a gun in his hand, or behind the wheel of a car. It’s not safe for him to leave, and he holds on to that knowledge like a drowning man with a lifeline. However difficult this is, however terrified he feels when the madness descends and he hears voices when there’s no-one there, this has to be better than the alternative.

An insane man who can break someone’s neck with his bare hands has no business being let loose on the streets.

So he submits to the tests, the sedation that only seems to make things worse, leaving him no more tired but hallucinating, flashes of colour and light surrounding everything he sees until he wants to scream in rage and frustration.

But Jim still has secrets, even in a place like this where he’s given up every shred of dignity he’s ever possessed. Because there’s a tiny crack in the door’s window surround, so small that he doubts anyone else can even see it, but if he concentrates really hard, if he stares at the crack until he can see in side it, can see every individual splinter of wood itself and then deeper still, then everything fades away, and he can lose himself for a while, and escape the insanity his life has become.

“…seems quiet today.”

He flinches back against the wall at the sound of the echoing voice, glancing out of the window but he knows from bitter experience that there will be no-one there.

His sight is going already, flashes of harsh light around the edges of the door even though it doesn’t normally happen this fast, and he has longer to resign himself to the loss of control he hates so much.

The colours grow stronger, threatening to blind him though he knows he won’t be that lucky and he squeezes his eyes shut, needing that brief moment of respite even though it’ll be twice as bad when he opens them again.

“..nothing more that can be done?”

It’s a voice he knows and his eyes fly open, wincing as everything spins and he starts to lose himself in a splash of a purple painting on the wall of the corridor outside until something blocks his view.

Simon.

They share a gaze for a brief moment and Jim can smell the cigar hanging from Simon’s mouth, until he suddenly realises that it’s not even lit, and that tiny reminder of just how wrong this is proves Jim’s undoing as his breath catches in his throat and he can feel the fear and anguish overwhelming him.

This can’t be all that’s left for him.

He’s shaking again, biting his lip in a futile attempt to hold himself together in front of Simon but the pity is clear on his friend’s face even through Jim’s treacherous eyes, proving to be his final undoing.

With a choked sob, Jim squeezes his eyes shut, rests his head on his knees once more, and cries.

 

~*~*~

 

The memory of Jim huddled on the floor of his room haunts Simon all the way back to the station, and he shuts his office door behind him with a weary sigh.

Jim has been in the hospital for months now, and even though, deep down, he already knew that his friend wasn’t going to get any better, hearing the words has hit him harder than he expected.

They’re not even sure what’s wrong with him. The doctors have called it synaesthesia, compounded with PTSD from his time in Peru, but Simon can tell that they’re only really guessing, and as far as he’s concerned, giving Jim’s condition a name means nothing if they can’t then fix it.

He hates going to the hospital. The man he sees in the hospital, broken and scared, that’s not the man he knows as Jim. Simon might have been the superior officer, but deep down he has always admired Ellison for what he’s been through, for how strong the man is.

Simon is ashamed to admit, even to himself, that he doesn’t go to the hospital as often these days as he once did. Seeing Jim like that brings home to him how dangerous his own job is, and the dangers aren’t just those caused by guns, or knives, or drugs. Nobody targeted Jim, they can’t blame gangs, or even a sniper. Jim’s mind has done this to himself, and with the job they do and the risks they take on a daily basis, it’s something that could happen to any of them, at any time.

Every time he visits Jim it’s driven that little bit deeper, until he finds himself tossing and turning at night, worried about Jim, about himself, about Daryl. 

That knowledge isn’t easy to live with.

Sighing, Simon turns his attention to the piles of files that litter his desk. It seems like there is more and more work these days. For each criminal they arrest, a dozen more rise up to take their place, and Simon can’t see any way that the Cascade PD as a whole can cope, let alone Major Crimes.

He opens the manila folder, casting his eyes quickly down the lines of type. The text tells him little that he hasn’t already been told. The warehouse was partially destroyed in the fire, that much he’d seen for himself at the crime scene, but there’s no evidence that the 357s were using the warehouse itself, only the building next door.

The body pulled out of the wreckage, one Blair Sandburg, has finally been traced to Rainer University, and since no connection to the drug operation has been found, the student’s death has simply been ruled a case of wrong place, wrong time. One more murder laid firmly at the door of the 357’s, though Simon knows without having to check that they will never be officially brought to account for the death. 

The war between the 357s and the Deuces is escalating every day, and no-one seems to be able to get through to them. Every attempt at reconciliation, or even of forcing a ceasefire, has failed, and the murder of a student is simply one more for the growing tally.

He finds it sad that Cascade is becoming a city where murders go unpunished, and drug wars are fought freely on the streets every night. 

“Simon!” he hears the shout just before his door bursts open. Simon is on his feet before Taggart is even through the door, slightly out of breath and with alarm in his eyes. 

Simon’s heart freezes, and he knows what’s coming even before Joel speaks. He’s been dreading this ever since the warehouse exploded.

“Rafe and Brown are pinned down on the corner of Fourth and Cranshaw. They’ve stopped responding to calls, but there are reports of an officer down. Backup is on the way.”

He can’t bring himself to reply, simply gesturing Taggart back the way he came and dropping the file on to his desk as he races out of the office. Snatching up his coat on the way, Simon casts one final, weary glance at the photo of Jim that sits on his desk as a gruesome reminder of the cost of being on what has now become a dangerous front line.

Surely it wasn’t supposed to be like this.


End file.
